


Keep the Car Running

by magickus



Category: Johnny the Homicidal Maniac
Genre: Amnesia, Canon Continuation, Canon-Typical Violence, Casual Murder, Character Study, Fluff and Angst, Ghost!Edgar, Hallucinations, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rating May Change, Road Trips, Stargazing, Vaguely Supernatural
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-10 02:29:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15281595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magickus/pseuds/magickus
Summary: Johnny just wanted to get away, to stop feeling. But for him, nothing ever happens like it should, especially when the ghosts of his past decide to haunt him.A collection of mysterious and not-so-mysterious happenings from Johnny's road trip of self-discovery.





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> title is a song by Arcade Fire, take it as this fic's theme song.
> 
> this fic is gonna be a real challenge to write, but i'm looking forward to it! excited to see where it takes me.

When the radioactive green numbers on his dashboard flick to three A.M., something changes.

Johnny’s personal highway is empty at this hour. The beams of his headlights slice through the mist that lies heavy and thick along the asphalt, curling through the desert countryside like seeping sewage. The last trace of humanity he had seen while leaving  _Dis_  was a white sedan, a solitary twin to his own pilgrimage, taking the empty place he left behind.

That was hours ago. Or perhaps days, or weeks. The mist here obscures the sky, hides his beautiful stars. Night and day could have passed under his nose and he would not be the wiser. Only the blinking digital clock on his dashboard tethers him to reality, and he cannot bring himself to trust that. Clocks lie too often, he finds.

Like his does now, winking at him three A.M., a staccato beat in his head. He eyes the burning numbers in distaste. He thumps his palm on his radio, then his fist, until his whole car rattles. He counts sixty mississippis in his head and the numbers stay frozen. 3:00 A.M.

The witching hour, he remembers, and his fingers tighten on the steering wheel. He leans forward, peers through his cracked and dirty windshield to the hidden sky. Perhaps he would be abducted along this lonely stretch of road, unremembered, like the protagonist of some old radio story. He certainly would not be missed, he knows.

He watches the sky for several long minutes. When nothing happens, he slumps back against his lumpy seat with a huff of disappointment.

A dark silhouette stands between his headlights. Johnny slams down on the breaks in pure instinct. His tires squeal in protest as he skids over the asphalt. The force throws him forward, his seatbelt locked around his throat. He knocks his forehead against the wheel. With a great groan and a lurch, his car settles back and stands still.

Johnny hisses and rubs his forehead. Anger boils beneath his skin. He thrusts his arm beneath the passenger seat and fishes out the first sharp object he can find. The suicidal idiot decided to jump out in front of his car and he would be more than pleased to grant them the end they so desired on this lonely night.

He straightens, fingers tight around the hilt of a long machete. The road is empty, aside from his lights and the mist. “I swear to _fuck_ ,” he spits. He kicks open his door and launches himself across the empty asphalt, copper in his mouth, between his teeth, a familiar blood-lust borne from ire. He squints against the dark, searching for movement,  _anything_ he can stick his weapon into— preferably something squishy, enough to rid himself of the horrid  _energy_ the near-crash injected into his veins. Nothing. No birds, no small animals, let alone a  _person._ The night is silent.

His car blinks innocently at him when he turns and glares at it. He checks its undercarriage and the backseat. He stalks to both sides of the road, like some sort of panther, snarls into the darkness and the mist, the still flat of the desert. Out in the chill, his breath curls in the air before him. The reminder of his humanity  _disgusts_ him, sends him spinning into another black-eyed rage. He darts back over to his car, catches his nails on its peeling paint and  _scratches_ until it squeals. Something must pay for angering him, after all, since that  _idiot_ had enough of a brain to book it into the mist. He kicks the door until it dents, until that angry animal fight escapes him. Only the necessity of a functioning vehicle stops him from destroying the hunk of warped metal entirely. He slows to a stop. His foot drops to the asphalt and he catches his breath until he doesn't have to think about it anymore. Exhausted, he wrenches open the abused door and throws himself into his seat with enough force that the whole car rocks with it.

“Do you feel better?”

Johnny screeches and hurtles over the emergency break at the waste of air occupying his passenger seat. He sees nothing, thinks nothing, other than the urge to  _h_ _urt_. But that voice, he knows that voice, that square jaw and goatee. A pair of round glasses reflect beneath the green of the clock.

The scream bubbling in his throat catches short. His body locks in place. Icy-cold dread and _recognition_  slides down his spine. This face, that voice, those glasses— _shattered at the bottom of his basement. He left them there, untouched, like a memorial to the one who did not deserve to die—_

The ghost stares back at him.

“...Edgar?”

The ghost smiles. “You remember me. I’m flattered.”

This isn’t right. Johnny  _knows_  he’s crazy, has been fully aware of it for a long time, but seeing  _ghosts?_ This is a new level, even for him. This can’t be  _right_. It can’t be real. It’s just another manifestation of that deep, cloying  _corruption_ , the rot in the walls of his mind taking on a face it doesn’t deserve.

His rage bubbles back. He curls his lips and bares his teeth, leans forward and presses the razor edge of his machete to the  _thing’s_  neck. Not-Edgar lifts his chin and his eyes spark with that same defiance. “ _You are not real_ ,” Johnny snarls. He tightens his grip around his weapon to hide the trembling in his fingers.

“I’m real enough,” Not-Edgar says, that same cool-calm.

“No!” Johnny cries out, presses harder, until the blade slips through flesh. A line of dark blood dribbles across Not-Edgar’s skin, catches hot on Johnny’s ungloved fingers. The contact sends him reeling back, until his spine presses against the round dent in the car door. Gross, gross— what is this,  _ectoplasm_? It’s too warm, too  _much_. Johnny shudders and wipes his fingers against the upholstery.

Edgar sits up and meticulously straightens out his shirt. He touches the gash across his neck and pulls back his fingers, examines the red painting his too-pale skin. Revulsion claws its way up Johnny’s throat, bidden by the  _wrongness_  of it all. None of the assholes sharing his bone-arena could  _bleed_.

“What are you?” he asks, cursing the way his voice trembles.

“I’m just Edgar,” the  _thing_  replies coolly, removing its glasses and cleaning off smudges with the edge of its rumpled shirt.

“But— but you’re  _dead_.”

“You would know all about that, wouldn’t you?”

Johnny bristles and reaches slowly for his knife once again. “Did _Diablo_  send you? Is he trying to fuck with me? Tell him I’m not in the mood and he should leave me the fuck  _alone_.”

Not-Edgar chuckles and sits back in the passenger seat. “No, I’m no agent of Satan, or something like that. Not Heaven either,” he adds, as Johnny opens his mouth to ask just that. “I’m here for  _you_.”

Johnny scoffs in disbelief. “For  _me?_  What is this Hallmark card vomit you're spewing? I don’t want anyone. I don’t  _need—_ ”

“You’re lonely,” Not-Edgar interrupts him, and a sidelong glance chills Johnny to his  _marrow_. “You’re alone on a road trip. You’re not supposed to be alone on a road trip— unless you drive an eighteen-wheeler. So, I’m here.”

“Why? Why me? I  _killed_ you, you shouldn't want to spend hours in a small metal death-trap with me.”

“Shouldn't I?” There's a hint of a laugh in Edgar’s voice. “If I recall— and I  _do—_  our conversation was nice enough. I was lonely too, remember? No friends, no family…”

“Just faith.”

“Right, just faith.”

Then Edgar(?) smiles and  _fuck_ , it’s like an  _echo_ , a play-by-play into his regret. Even now, when he closes his eyes, he can summon the image of that same smile, shaken yet defiant. And still, his eyes are kind, crinkled at the corners. Johnny always regretted what he had to do that day, and perhaps, maybe now…

He’s pathetic. He opens his eyes and Edgar raises his eyebrows expectantly. The cut across his throat is gone, and so is the blood. Johnny shudders and hides it by cranking up the heater he previously ignored. His hands return to the wheel, knuckles white as he clutches it tight in his hands.

His clock laughs at him. 3:00 A.M. He inhales deep, until his head swims, clenches his eyes shut tight until stars burst behind his retinas, cursing the memories plaguing him. Perhaps, if he sits here long enough, if he pinches himself or hits his head against the dashboard enough times, it will all just  _go away_.

When he looks again, he finds Edgar still sitting there, unchanged, gangly and pale and  _impossible_. Defeated, he presses onto the gas and continues his journey, now saddled with the unnatural, bleeding, too-real specter of one of his greatest mistakes.

“Put your fucking seatbelt on,” Johnny snaps. The button clicks. Johnny pretends like he doesn’t relax, now that Edgar won’t fly through the windshield if some  _other_ phantom of his past decides to stop them.

 

 


	2. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gore warning for this chapter

Morning comes. The purgatorial fog that held him in limbo for untold hours slips away like it was never there. Dawn is bright and cloudless, bleeding pink over the distant blue hills that break the flat lines of the desert. The heat comes and replaces the icy chill of night. Johnny slaps another hand on his fucked clock, but it continues to bleed the same three digits.

Just another thing to go wrong. Why is it whenever he has something _nice_ , even for a second, something ruins it? He set off on this pilgrimage to be alone, to beat out everything that made him  _feel_ , but then something just _had_ to conjure a ghostly apparition of his past. Frustration forces out a growl from deep in his throat. Beside him, Edgar stirs from sleep. Maybe? Do ghosts need to sleep?

Whatever. Edgar sits up in his seat— _since when did it become his? —_ and stretches his arms over his head. His bones creak and crack and Johnny grimaces at that horrible _noise_. Too much like…

“Don’t do that,” he snaps. “Please.” Tacked on as an afterthought.

Edgar _looks_ at him. He doesn’t just look, he _looks_ , as if he can hear Johnny’s thoughts playing like a radio in the thin, hot air between them. Edgar’s eyes are too knowing and _calm_. Johnny drums his fingers on the wheel. Before the silence gets too thick, before Johnny loses his tenuous grip on his self-control and throttles the poltergeist in his passenger seat, the road signs signal a rest stop, next exit.

Eager to get out into the air, Johnny drifts across six lanes of highway and goes careening into the exit, uncaring of the angry honks that follow the movement. Edgar grips the _oh-shit_ handle above his head and goes even more pale, if possible. “Are you trying to kill me _again?”_

“What, can’t handle a little danger? What happened to _fuck fear?”_

“Cursing _fear_ won’t cure motion sickness!” Johnny laughs raucously at that—something about a ghost being _motion sick_ stands out to him as _hilarious_.

A squat little building comes up to meet them, red-bricked and sloping. Heatwaves drift up from the modest two-lane road that guides their car into a dirty, litter-infested lot. A courtyard pockmarked by picnic benches wilts in bone-white gravel. It’s a sad, off-kilter place, perfect for the two freakshows that walk out of Johnny’s car. Well, walk in Edgar’s case. Johnny launches himself out of that confined space like a ballistic missile. He bounds across the slippery gravel and leaps onto the top of a bench, hands flat on his hips. He takes in a deep breath of hot desert air and flings his arms wide open, up to the endless blue that stretches horizon to horizon.

“The sky is so big out here,” he says. He stretches further, as if he could touch the distant blue-ringed edge of the world with the tips of his fingers. “Nothing to break it up, make it smaller. It’s so flat that the sky is _endless_.” Something giddy is born in his chest, light and airy. “Imagine all the stars we could see, away from it all, no pollution to hide it.” Too bad the fog was so thick last night, when Edgar appeared. He’ll have to stay longer in this little stretch of nothing, just to see his stars.

“It’s said that the human eye can see up to thirty miles away,” Edgar supplies. Johnny turns and regards the ghost, skinny and pale. A sheen of sweat collects on Edgar’s forehead and he wipes it away with the back of his hand. The movement, so _horrendously human_ , startles Johnny into leaping off the bench. He races for an excuse.

“Want anything?” he asks, pointing inside.

“I’m dead, remember? I don’t need anything.”

“Sure, okay, but that’s not what I asked. If you’re going to be my guest on this pilgrimage of mine, I will make sure to be a _gracious_ host.” Johnny sweeps into a bow, flicking his wrist expertly as he goes, and Edgar chuckles.

“Alright, alright. I’ll see if I _want_ anything.”

Energized once again, Johnny skips into the dumpy little building. A bright, musical tone signals his entrance to the bored middle-aged man behind the register, who glances up once, rolls his eyes, then returns to his magazine, scratching his potbelly.

Johnny’s fingers twitch. His earlier joy and excitement are replaced by curdling _disgust_. What’s he rolling his eyes at? He must think he’s _better_ than them, enough to express open scorn despite being the picture definition of fucking _shit_. Johnny could take out those eyes and roll them properly, across the disgusting floor, see if he thought he was so _high and mighty_ then—

Edgar, just behind him, shifts enough to catch his attention. He pauses, his hand stilling on its journey to the inside of his coat, where he keeps a butterfly knife for situations like these. “ _What?_ ” Johnny hisses, vexed at Edgar for interrupting his wrath.

Edgar takes a sip of the Brainfreezy he filled, and gestures wordlessly to the rumbling machine behind him. Johnny could cry. He just might. And they have  _cherry_. Maybe things aren’t so bad after all.

Sporting an extra-jumbo cup of perfect red slush, he shuffles through disorganized aisles, picking things out at random. Probably-Beef jerky, Bugles (great for witch-claws), a pack of water bottles, fruity candy, and a pair of driving gloves that he rips open with his teeth and tugs over his hands after shoving his plunder into Edgar’s arms. The ghost struggles with it and Johnny can’t help but laugh, feeling far more at ease now that his skin is covered and he’s safe from any unwanted contact with a probably-cursed being.

The cashier eyes them skeptically, and even the violent stench of chili dogs and beer doesn’t squander Johnny’s good mood. Edgar, balancing their drinks, places an impressive number of snacks onto the counter.

“...Is that it?” the cashier asks, his voice ugly and boorish. Johnny almost rips his wallet in two.

“Yes.”

The cashier makes a disgruntled, piggish noise, a huff and snuff of clogged sinuses and phlegm. Johnny slaps down a twenty, stomach curling. The man’s beady little eyes flick over him. “Not good dress for the desert, kid. You’ll get heat stroke in that circus-clown get up.”

Oh, it’s like _that?_ Anger erupts within him, explosively, and with a snarl he launches himself across the counter and wraps his hands around a disgusting, thick throat and he squeezes that fat and _shakes_. His vision tunnels to the sweaty, gasping _pig_ at his mercy. “I didn’t _ask_ , did I? No! I don’t recall asking for your opinion! The _last_ thing I needed today was a deluge of untapped _shit_ from the gaping orifice of _filth_ _like you!_ ”

“I-I’m--”

“ _Shut up!_ Shut the fuck _up!_ ” He screams and shoves his hand into the inner lining of his coat, grinning wide and sick when his fingers close around cool metal.

A hand on his shoulder forces him deathly still. He turns his head, slowly, wild eyes locking with _aggravatingly_ calm ones. Edgar says nothing. He withdraws his hand and, without breaking eye contact, shakes his head.

_Don’t do it._

Edgar doesn’t want him to lay waste to this sorry sack of excrement. Of _course_ he wouldn’t, Edgar’s just that sort of goodie-toe-shoes that _frowns_ upon the well-deserved death of vermin. He’s asking for it, practically _begging_ with his beady little eyes and his alcoholic breath. Johnny snarls in challenge. They stay, locked still, a quiet battle of wills as the man slowly asphyxiates beneath Johnny’s fist.

_Look at him. He’s disgusting. He doesn’t deserve to breathe the same air as you. Kill him. Kill him._

A harsh, metallic screech blares between them. Johnny’s knife is out before anyone can blink. It buries itself deep within an eye-socket and the man _screams_. His hand falls away from the alarm he pressed while Johnny was distracted. A quick flick of his wrist brings his knife back to his side, splattered up to its hilt in mangled bits of eyeball and bone and brain. The cashier drops like the lump of shit he is, screaming and twitching.

Edgar stays still this time, as Johnny throws himself back into the thick of it, encouraged by the first drawing of blood, the deep satisfaction that thrums through him as he shoves his knife into the other eye, a thick chest and stomach. He drives the knife in over and over until the disgusting waste of air stops screaming, stops moaning, stops _anything_. Even then, he keeps going, drags his knife down through flesh to reveal the ugly, pulsing, red garbage beneath the surface. An imperfect machine. How pitiful.

Johnny smears blood off his cheek, panting. His mouth tastes sour with adrenaline. He forces a laugh, wipes gore off his blade on the cashier’s shirt.

He gathers up their stuff and they’re back on the road with a cloud of dust behind them. Beside him, Edgar sits. Between them curls the copper-sweet scent of blood. Johnny breathes hard, monitoring the rise and fall of his chest, the harsh drumbeat of his heart, until the red tunnel in his vision bleeds away.

He glances at Edgar. The ghost stares out the window, his eyes tracing the curving power-lines along the road. “Why did you try to stop me?” Johnny growls.

Edgar ignores him. Johnny curbs his next surge of violence by sipping at his freezy. When Edgar’s turns to liquid, untouched in the cupholder between them, he drinks that too. Blue raspberry, a gross, artificial flavor. He drinks it anyway. The earth passes silently beneath them. Another lonely soul goes by every so often, buffeting the car with wind, enough to ensure Johnny remembers the rest of humanity and its unfortunate existence.

As Johnny watches the road, Edgar disappears. His disappointment fills the space he left behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> edgar really has his work cut out for him with this one.


	3. 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning in this chapter for religious discussion and a brief mention of child abuse. take care of yourselves!

He finds a stack of firewood abandoned by the road and figures it's as good as he's gonna get. He pulls over. His car is hot enough to fry brains after hours baking in the desert heat, but Johnny ignores the sting and sits on the hood. A medium sized log rests in his lap. He clutches a knife in one hand. Its hilt is pearled, and its blade shines iridescent in the unforgiving sun, like a hummingbird wing. Not the best knife for carving— too pretty, too delicate— but it will have to do.

There's a fleeting vision in his mind, born out of a rare moment of inspiration. Logs on the side of the road. Who just leaves logs lying around? He can still see it, barely, made strong by the impulse he acted upon without hesitation. Drawing is lost, has been for a long time— if he must draw Happy Noodle Boy again he might actually kill himself. He's never whittled before (he thinks, but even when he looks over his shoulder, at his distant and murky past, there's a lack of familiarity.) He's good with knives. He'll make it work. Eventually.

He puts the blade's edge to the bark, and hacks.

It's brutal. Johnny grunts as he carves and stabs, graceless, angry, and lacking finesse. Sweat beads on the back of his neck as the sun beats angrily down upon him. He rolls up his sleeves, heedless of the heat trapped under his skin. Before, the far-off and foreign part of the population warned against exposure to the sun, citing moles and wrinkles and cancers. Before, he was untouchable. He wouldn't have spared the notion a second thought. After Hell, the subject of his mortality is debatable. Cancer would be a pathetic way to go out. Like most of the challenging things in his life, he ignores it and keeps cutting.

He furrows his brow and grits his teeth. Wood chips away beneath his knife. He clutches stubbornly to his vision, his inspiration. It's the last inkling of creativity he's felt for an eternity and a half. It's unclear. He sees writhing shapes in shadow, brief flashes of color and sound, a symphony. It's different from the compulsions of The Wall. It's familiar in a dreamy way, like an old, beloved film. Dormant. Wild and untamed, untapped, a yawning beast in the squishy basement of his brain-meats waiting to be brought into the light. It beckons him, but its song is like coming home.

He starts sawing. He needs to keep hold of this. It's a part of himself, he knows; the part that's really him, not the product of supernatural machinations, or the driving labor of his humanity.

He sees this fraction of his whole, feels its potential. He could make something beautiful. He saw it and _chose_ it and it's his, now, no one else's. Not the Wall or the Doughboys’; not Heaven or Hell’s; certainly not the Reverend's. He won't be molded by anyone or anything anymore. He's him. He's Johnny C. and he belongs to _no one_.

The heat shifts, and the wood beneath his hand goes soft. Johnny grips tighter around the slack, torn face in his hand. He keeps going. He drives the knife in, heedless of the scream that erupts from its gaping black maw. It's not real. Its sagging skin, splintered bone, and dripping blood that _pitter pats_ into the rusty sand are all illusions. His mind is fractured like the mirror in his hallway that bears a comical imprint of his face. It's the heat, the strange desert emptiness. Even his mind threatens to control him, but he won't let it. He won't.

“Not even you,” he whispers. Edgar's unseeing eyes stare back at him. Deep and empty, watery and bloodshot and _sad_ , so sad, he swims in that abyss until he burns for air. His knife stills, set against pale skin, ready to dig and rend at his behest. He keeps it still.

When he comes up for air, the wood is back. Its shape is crude and angry, jagged edges and warped curves. He's not sure what to make of it. His vision is there, twitching at the back of his mind when he prods at it, but it isn't  _this_.

Johnny tosses the useless hunk of wood aside. He picks up a new log, another face, and gets back to work.

 

* * *

 

 

“I tried wood carving,” he says to the empty air. He's back on the road now. He ran out of logs.

“How'd that go?” And Edgar is there. He's whole, this time, as he should be. Still dead and cold, as he shouldn't. His face flickers in the sunlight. For a moment, he’s taken apart, then he’s back together. Humpty Dumpty. Johnny stifles a laugh.

“I'm gonna be optimistic and say it went pretty well, considering I've never done it before. At least, I think I haven't.”

“I’m sure you have plenty of practice _carving_ things.”

“I do! Wood is different— not like flesh or bone. It doesn’t give. The whole amnesia thing makes taking up new hobbies on impulse really fucking complicated, for some reason. My head hurts.”

“Drink some water,” Edgar scolds. Mother-henning from a ghost. “You're in the _desert_ , Nny. For the love of God, you may think you're untouchable, but I'll be laughing when you're in the throes of dehydration.”

Johnny lets out the laugh waiting under his tongue. He reaches out and, to their mutual surprise, takes a sip from the lukewarm water bottle between them. _Naïve,_ reads the label. He chugs the whole thing and throws it into the back seat. He won't suffer through being condescended by a plastic bottle.

“Still onboard the God train, huh?” Johnny asks. The road shimmers like a mirage in the heat. Waves come off the asphalt. Johnny imagines their car surfing along them. “That’s annoying. I'd kill you if you weren't already dead.”

“That's very nice of you. Sorry, someone’s beaten you to it.” Johnny understands that plainly: _fuck you_. Fair enough.

“There's conviction and then there’s blindness. They pull the wool over your eyes. Lead you like a sheep to slaughter and when they give you your porridge to fatten you up you just drink away! You have glasses, Edgar. You can’t be blind.”

“I'm not blind.”

“And I'm not horrendously insane. I know your type. They bury this shit in you from birth, tape your eyes open and subject you to reruns of _Veggie Tales_ , feed you spoonfuls of that scrumptious God-fearing juice until suddenly all your choirboys are too scared to speak up when the priest starts fondling them!”

“ _Johnny._ ” Too far. He keeps going.

“Tell me then, Edgar. Did Heaven live up to your expectations?”

Edgar scowls at him, clearly put-out. “Who am I to question God's design? If that’s the Paradise He chose for us, I don’t object.” It's flat and rehearsed. Johnny scowls at the road. Arguing religion with a _ghost._ Stupid.

“Then why are you _here_ then? Why aren’t you living it up turning into a vegetable in your chair. Oh no. _Veggie Tales_ suddenly makes way too much sense.”

“Things happen for a reason, Nny.” Not _Johnny_. Less anger.

“Don't start puking scripture at me or I'll personally invoke the name of your God to exorcise you from this fucking vehicle,” he threatens. “I don't give two fucks and a shit about _God's_ design, _God's_ plan. You saw him, didn't you?”

“...Yes, but—"

“And you know what he's been doing for the past billion years while we’ve been suffering?”

“...Sl—"

“Fucking _sleeping_! Having a cat-nap! A snooze! A siesta! Meanwhile his _beloved creations_ are killing each other! Wars! Famine! Institutionalized discrimination! Reality television! USB sticks that never go in right no matter which way you turn it!!! He let his creations seep in a writhing cesspool of shit and garbage because he couldn't be _assed_ to care, to get up off his stupid fucking couch and be a _real_ dad for once!”

Johnny sucks in a sharp breath. The car falls silent. The engine putters. The finger bone shoved into the AC rattles. Other cars pass by them. Johnny feels their wind, but they seem so far away now. He's somewhere else. He's sitting on the living room floor. The rug scratches his skin. He reaches out. He feels so… small…

“...Nny?”

He knows immediately what it was: a vision from his past, from The Johnny Before the Wall. The Johnny who had a last name beyond a single letter, who drew pictures, who had a family. The Johnny who was _born_ instead of just appearing into a wretched existence, fully-grown and angry. Already he longs to see more, to know more. He wants to reach out and peel back that veil, to dig into the meat of who he _is_.

He shakes himself. Just another want, another thing to hold power over him. That old Johnny is gone. He's supposed to be here now, _he's_ in control. If the Before Johnny comes back, where will _he_ be?

“Well,” he continues, fighting away a tremble. “If _God's design_ was, in fact, to make us in his image, he did a bang-up job. Humanity is just as pathetic as he is.”

Edgar is too quiet. When Johnny peels his eyes off the road to look, he finds Edgar staring right at him. “Where are you driving, Johnny?” he asks.

Johnny doesn't have an answer for him. Not right now.

“You should go,” he whispers. Edgar goes. The steering wheel strains beneath his grasp.


	4. 4

It’s like the floodgates were opened. Images flicker erratically in his mind as he drives through the better part of the day and the night. They’re faded and blurry and completely nonsensical. His sight gives out in favor of cryptic silhouettes, and when he comes too again he’s in another lane of traffic. The only thing his visions succeed in doing is giving him a splitting headache and pissing him off.

Johnny tries turning the radio up to full blast. He even listens to the horrendous _pop_ channel, but the thumping bassline and squeaky idol voices only increase his ire. He bangs his fist repeatedly on the wheel as another vision takes over, putting him somewhere else, making him _someone else_.

He won’t lose his mind _again_ —or at least, worse than it is now. It’s his mind to lose, _dammit_ , and he won’t have some echo of his past continuously wrench control from his hands.

An outlet. He needs an outlet. It’s perfectly healthy for him to let out his aggression. He just needs someone—soon. He needs to feel flesh give beneath his knife, hear screams and the last, heaving rattle of breath before that blessed end comes. Another stain of shit wiped off the face of the earth.

“Isn’t that a bit _hypocritical?_ ”

Johnny jumps so high he bangs his head on the ceiling. “ _Fucking shit on a tricycle!_ Do you come with some sort of _warning_? A bell, maybe?”

“I’m not a cat.”

“You sure as fuck follow me around and rub up on me like one.”

Edgar’s face pinches, like Johnny just shoved a lemon in his mouth. “You’re on this trip because you want to stop your compulsive urges, Nny,” Edgar says, ignoring the earlier jab, much to Johnny’s displeasure. “Now you’re _compulsively_ plotting something violent.”

“It’s _your_ fault.”

Edgar arches a thin eyebrow. “Is it?”

“ _Yes_. You’re the one who has to _argue_ with me all the time, if you hadn’t said anything—”

“I _didn’t_ say anything.”

Johnny tightens his fingers on the wheel. His head throbs in time with his pulse. It’s sickening—how _alive_ he is. Control. Control. “I _really_ hate this whole _interrupting-me_ thing you’ve been doing.”

“You arrived at your conclusion on your own, without my handholding,” Edgar continues, as if Johnny hadn’t said anything. “Though, sometimes you _need_ it. You’re probably the most emotionally-dense person I’ve ever met.”

Screw _control._ That _does it_. Johnny lets go of himself, of the growling, angry beast coiled beneath his skin. Johnny yanks the wheel and they go careening through multiple lanes of traffic onto the shoulder. He slams on his breaks and Edgar—sans seatbelt—goes flying out of his seat. His face mashes against the dashboard. His glasses crack and he collapses back into his seat. He didn’t go through the windshield. What a fucking disappointment. Johnny has enough sense through the red haze in his eyes to yank up on the emergency break. He pounces on Edgar and a knife is in one hand as the other presses the ghost down to the upholstery by his throat. His knife seeks flesh and imbeds itself into the meat of Edgar’s shoulder.

As soon as the blade connects, something within him _sings_. It’s a relief, almost, like letting go of something after hours of holding it aloft. All that frustration and anger builds itself beneath the weight of the knife as he leans into it, until its hilt catches against Edgar’s skin.

Edgar doesn’t even _flinch_. His face sets into a cool, impassive mask and stays that way, even when Johnny’s knife finds his lungs and his small intestine and his heart. He’s already dead, he reminds himself. Already dead so it can’t hurt him worse, Johnny already hurt him worse once before. The car rocks behind the force of Johnny’s attacks. The slick sound of sundered skin fills the space between them. Edgar’s blood, blacker than the night that surrounds them, seeps against his gloves then disappears alongside the holes Johnny leaves behind.

Edgar just… takes it. He watches. He lies there, immobile and pliant like the corpse he is, but his eyes are too _bright,_ and they look at him and they see _too much_. This isn’t right. For a moment it felt good and right, but it all becomes hollow and empty. There’s no point to it anymore, not when it hurts _him_ and not Edgar. _What’s he doing_? His impulses took hold of him and controlled his body like a marionette on the string.

Johnny slows. He stops. His chest heaves with every breath. His head pounds, his eyes throb like they’re about to leap from his skull. He feels sick.

Edgar lifts himself onto his elbows. Johnny feels the unnatural shift of weight beneath him and his skin lights up beneath his layering, pinging proximity warnings. Too close, too close, too much too quick. His mind feels like a wire with the rubber peeled back and the delicate copper exposed. He scurries away, flinging himself into the back seat.

“Are you done?” Edgar asks, smoothing out his shirt like he wasn’t just ripped to shreds. Again.

Johnny nods.

“Do you feel better?”

He thinks for a moment. His skin itches, all over, like there are worms inching beneath his flesh. His head hurts. His knuckles ache from being wrapped so tightly around the knife. But he’s here. He’s present. “I think so.” A pause. “You did that… on purpose.” The atmosphere becomes crushing and awkward. “Thanks?”

“Don’t mention it—really. Don’t.”

Johnny fumbles with the lock on the back door for an embarrassing amount of time before he escapes out into the night. The cool air is a relief after the heavy, charged air inside the car that hung ripe with violence. Johnny takes deep, gulping breaths, holds the charred air in his lungs. His breaths fog out in writhing shapes when he lets them go. The last legs of adrenaline gradually leave his body. It’s disgusting.

The stars are out. They stretch endlessly across the sky, like someone flicked a paintbrush damp with pure light upwards and it all stuck. Johnny hoists himself up onto the roof of the car and lies down. He straightens his legs until they dangle over the curve of his windshield. He crosses his arms over his chest, like the dead do—are supposed to do. He’s seen his fair share of the dead, and they don’t lie down and pose and look pretty. They bloat and stink, they rot and their skin sags away from the bone, they become a feast for ants and maggots.

The bugs have it easy. No emotion, no manic happy or depression, no insatiable urge for violence that explodes against the nearest target. They live the high life, sheltered from the din and toil of being human. Oh, how he longs for his own chrysalis, his own transcendence beyond the manacles of emotion and need. A rebirth, a metamorphosis.

Like this, he fools himself into floating. The sky and the land blend together. He hovers in the void, the endless sea of nothing that greets him. His breaths slow. He reaches a palm upwards and spreads his fingers and starlight blooms at his fingertips. A streak of light races across the sky.

Should he make a wish? How funny, the powers-that-be receiving a wish from him. He’s probably the last person on earth who deserves a wish. He makes one anyway. He wishes for… for something good, he thinks. He doesn’t know what he wishes, shouldn’t have wishes anymore. It just sets him up for disappointment in the long run, when nothing good happens, as always. He likes to test anyway, push boundaries.

The car shifts beneath a new addition of weight, like a boat rocking on the sea. The movement brings him back down to earth. Johnny turns his head enough to watch Edgar climb up beside him, his stupidly long legs dangling over the passenger-side door. How interesting—Johnny didn’t think he would stick around after his outburst. He sits, folds his legs up into his chest and hugs himself tight. He avoids Edgar’s eyes. They know too much, he learned.

“Are you upset?” he asks, instead of turning to look at Edgar and see for himself.

He hears Edgar sigh, then the slight squeak of fabric on glass. Must be cleaning his glasses. They broke, didn’t they? Johnny turns to look, and there they are, perfectly whole. One of the legs is slightly bent. Has it always been like that? Johnny’s gaze flicks up to Edgar’s face. He’s gaunt and pale. His face is weird without his glasses on—his face too long, his eyes too small.

Edgar replaces his glasses. “No,” he answers. He turns his gaze upwards. The bright, shimmering expanse of the Milky Way stretches across the sky. It’s beautiful.

“I’ve never seen so many stars,” Edgar says, soft enough to match the stillness, the awe. The moon climbs higher, a thin slash of silver through the sky, a Cheshire cat grinning down at them. The stars revolve, spinning in an intricate ballet through space. The earth turns beneath them, and Johnny can feel its speed, the weight it bears. He can relate.

“Why did you do that?” Johnny asks. “You didn’t even try to fight back.”

Edgar smiles ruefully. “It was either me, or someone else. Someone innocent.”

“Martyring yourself? I didn’t think you had it in you—when you were livelier, you insisted I find someone worthier of death. I would’ve found someone worthy.”

“Death has a funny way of changing your outlook on life.” Edgar offers a shrug, an odd gesture on someone usually so _certain_.

Johnny turns his attention back upwards. It’s a stupid, heroic notion. Edgar must have some sort of half-baked illusion of grandeur stirring around in his dead head.

“You can’t change me,” Johnny whispers. “If that’s what you’re trying to do, you can’t.”

“That’s alright.”

“I can’t even change _myself_.”

“Do you have to?”

“I want to, or I wouldn’t be here.”

“But where are you _going_ , Nny?”

Johnny opens his mouth, then decides not to answer. Right now, physically, he’s going east, wherever the wind and the road takes him. Beyond that, he doesn’t _know_. Not in a metaphysical sense, at least. He knows what he wants, and Edgar is doing fuck-all to help. “I’m going to stop feeling,” he tries. “I’m going to turn it off.”

“I don’t think it’s that simple, Nny.”

He liked Edgar better back then, when he was defiant in the face of death and shared a riveting discussion with Johnny. Then, for a moment, he had a friend. He could forget that aching loneliness. All he had to do _then_ was pull a lever and make that inkling of connection disappear.

Now, it’s much harder. Now Edgar feels like knowing and guilt. Now he gets in the way, he talks back and argues, he gets a furrow in his brow when he disparages after Johnny’s atrocious self-care habits and frowns when Johnny becomes violent, like Johnny can _do_ anything about it. He feels like he’s going around in circles—from one puppeteer to the next. What’s the difference between the Wall and his violence? He can’t tell anymore. It all blends together.

“You’re thinking about it again.”

“About what?”

“My death.”

Johnny’s spine straightens. A chill travels through his body that has nothing to do with the desert night. He knows too much— always _knows_. “That’s fucking creepy.”

“Not really. You’re easy to read, always get this… look. Like you’re sad, like it’s eating you up inside whenever you look at me.” A beat. Johnny is distinctly uncomfortable with the direction of this conversation. He shuffles away from the ghost on the roof of his car, desperate for some space between them. Edgar continues, and he sounds _amused_. Johnny finds the impulse to stab him prevalent once again, but he stamps it down. “Are you sorry?”

“…No, not really. I would do it again, if I had to.”

Edgar nods, like he received exactly the answer he expected. “You pick a funny time to mourn. I’m right next to you.”

Johnny laughs, because he can’t think of anything else to do. The air around him feels tight, and the sky, once open and light, becomes heavy. The stars keep an ever-present vigil. He can feel the points of their stare digging into his skin. “Better late than never, I guess.”

Edgar— _impossible, knowing Edgar_ —surprises him. “I forgive you.”

The benediction crushes Johnny beneath its weight. Edgar’s forgiveness is immense and infinite. Johnny gasps before he can stop himself, clamps both hands over his mouth and digs his nails into the soft skin of his cheeks. He shakes with the effort of keeping himself under control, burrowing the endless scream that he can feel pushing at every pore. Edgar’s stare joins the stars’, digging and digging until it _hurts_.

Then Edgar averts his attention politely upwards and leaves Johnny in an aching silence, until morning comes and chases it all away.


End file.
